This is actually the theory behind a common pratice known as trunking.
Trunking is accomplished by using an intermediate software solution between,
I believe, the adapter driver and the operating system as well as
implementing a network switch that supports trunking (most do these days -
look at Extreme or Foundry products for example).
The trunking software is responsible for balancing the load across the
multiple adapters and therefore the multiple ports on the switch thus
providing a very large pipe. The switch can than deal with the traffic as
needed. Companies with adapters supporting this technology for gig include
(off the top of my head) Sun and Phobos. Sun also supports this for
Ethernet, as I'm sure others do.
Dual-gig links providing up to 4 GBit "pipes" are common as are quad-100
Mbit links providing pipes of up to 800 Mbit/s. (Note that 800 Mbit = 4 phy
* 100 Mbit per phy * 2 since the links are assumed to be full duplex. Same
with gig - 2 phy * 1 Gbit * 2)
The only caveat, especially with gig trunking, you need a LOT of horsepower.
Something in the neightborhood of quad 500+ MHz Ultrasparcs is a good
starting point. The reason for this is actually a limitation of Ethernet -
relatively small frame sizes. Each 1518 byte frame (the biggest standard
frame) means a CPU interrupt. Do the math and as I recall it works out to in
the neighborhood of 80,000 CPU interupts per second. That creates quite a
load. The result is that your 4 Gbit pipe may only see throughput in the
neighborhood of 800 Mbit/s throughput.
A good solution, IMHO, is for folks to embrace "jumbo frames". Increase the
the max frame size from 1518 bytes to the proposed 8 Kbytes, and you cut
your CPU interrupts significantly.
You can look at some of the work my company has done with trunking and some
info on jumbo frames as well at http://www.tolly.com.
-----Original Message-----
From: Johan Aberg [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 1999 12:21 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: 2 ethernet-cards, one IP
Hi!
Is it possible to configure two ethernet cards to listen to the same IP
adress thus double the bandwith? Say, install 2x100Mbit cards and get 200
Mbit transfers.
-johan
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